Covington Twp. hunter's bear just short of world record

Daniel Beavers with the 772-pound black bear he shot in Covington Twp.

Roger Kingsley had measured enough black bear skulls to know immediately the one from Covington Twp. was special.

It turned out to be large enough to get 50-year-old Daniel Beavers, who killed the bear during the November hunting season, into the world record book.

When he measured the skull from the 772-pound animal, Mr. Kingsley, an official Boone and Crockett Club scorer who lives in Bradford County, knew it was an abnormally wide skull.

Headquartered in Missoula, Montana, the Boone and Crockett Club is recognized as the leading authority on big-game record-keeping. It is the nation’s oldest wildlife conservation organization, founded in 1887 by Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell.

The skull measured in at 22 and 7/16 inches. It fell an inch and 2/16 short of the largest skull of a black bear taken by a hunter, but was still good for the top 20 ever recorded.

The measurement wrapped up an adventure for Mr. Beavers that started when, missing his deceased father, the Covington Twp. resident took his dad’s .30-06 rifle hunting instead of his usual 12-gauge shotgun.

About an hour into the hunt on Nov. 25, Mr. Beavers fired the rifle twice at the enormous bear and claimed a prize he saw as a tribute to his father, who taught him to hunt at age 12.

After The Times-Tribune wrote about Mr. Beavers, versions of the story appeared in media outlets worldwide.

“It was really weird,” Mr. Beavers said. “I couldn’t go anywhere without people asking me about it. I was telling the same story over and over and over.”

He even started getting hate mail from animal rights activists.

“I hope you take the same gun you shot the bear with to your own head,” read one letter, while another overtly threatened him.

The way Mr. Beavers sees it, many of the same people who see hunting as cruel do not think too hard about where their Thanksgiving dinners come from.

Along with measuring the skull from Mr. Beavers, Mr. Kingsley also scored the world record holder, a 733-pound black bear with a skull measuring 23 9⁄16 inches, killed by Robert Christian of East Stroudsburg in 2011. It probably isn’t a coincidence.

Not long before he measured the Monroe County skull a couple of years ago, Mr. Kingsley said Boone and Crockett officials predicted the next world record would come from Pennsylvania.

The Keystone State has ideal conditions for bears to grow large, he explained, with good food sources and a climate conducive to hibernation periods well-suited for growth.

Contact the writer:

kwind@timesshamrock.com,

@kwindTT on Twitter

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